Craighaydock's profile

craighaydock

Male

Lake Mills, WI

Member since November 13, 2016

About Me:

On my 40th birthday, I took a bet form my wife to loose roughly 40 pounds in exchange for her taking SCUBA lessons. I took up cycling to achieve that goal inside of 6 months. Going into the winter months and not wanting to pack on the "holiday pounds" I got a professional coach to keep me focused. It not only kept off the pounds, it also lead to an interest in bike racing.

My first year of biking, prior to getting a coach I participated in the Ride Across Wisconsin (RAW), a 175 mile ride across the southern border of the state. My second time doing RAW I finished considerably faster and with a lot more energy left over than I thought I should have. Considering I was still recovering from nearly a month off of the bike and was not on top of my game, I felt inspired to seek out something more epic than RAW.... which lead me to the Race Across America (RAAM). An epic 3000 mile ride across the US in 12 days.

I know I can do the ride so long as I stay focused, stay in shape, and plan everything meticulously. My intent is to qualify for RAAM in 2017 and/or 2018 and participate in RAAM in 2019.

Why I want to get in shape

I want/need a better power to weight ration (W/kg) for cycling. Especially for hill climbing, which I currently suck at.

I've been keeping track of my bike training for well over a year now. If I'm going to participate in RAAM in 2019, I need to be on top of my game and start taking my nutrition seriously too now. It doesn't help that for a while I was at least watching what I ate and got down to 173 and then gained 10 pounds because of losing that focus. I need to not only regain focus, but but get lower than I've been in a long time while not sacrificing fitness. That won't happen by just watching calories alone.

RAAM will be a brutal ride and every bit of fitness will be needed. The army saying is that "ounces equal pounds" which is a reminder to them of what they pack and carry for gear. In biking, people pay thousands of dollars just to lower their bike weight by a few ounces in effort to optimize their W/kg ratio. Given my current body weight... I have 10's of thousands of dollars to save just by loosing some excess fat. I would like to be down to low 170's by next race season and be in the mid 160's in prep for RAAM. From a body fat perspective... Ideally, I would like to be under 10% body fat for the race.